Every business starts with a plan, and every good plan needs a budget. Budgeting, in simple terms, is a planning document for the future. It is an estimation of the revenue and expenses over a specified future period of time. A budget can be made for a person, family, group of people, business, government, country, multinational organization or anything else that makes and spends money. Organizations utilize budgets for performance evaluation, strategy implementation, and strategy formation. A budget can contain both financial and non-financial information.
For preparation of a budget, companies often utilize budgeting software. Companies, organizations, and firms study the market in which they operate, the competition, potential demand, economic conditions, and costs of goods sold, operating expenses, inventory, and other assets. Strategic use of resources can lead to new revenue sources and commercial advantages.
The rapid advancement of technology has resulted in an exponential growth in the number of patent and trademark cases. Attorneys and law firms compete for clients. One of their challenges is to deliver services at a lower cost and with greater efficiency. Corporate law departments often hire outside vendors such as law firms. Thus, they need to effectively track vendor spending and legal manners. Typical accounts payable software does not have the level of detail necessary to make projections and reports. Thus, law firms and inhouse legal departments often turn to legal case management software or electronic legal billing software that includes budgeting in some manner. Presently, the budgeting functionality in these software programs are limited in functionality. Therefore, there is a need for a budgeting system that combines several points of analysis to result in more expansive capability to manage resources. There is a need for a budgeting software system that integrates different types of information including transaction histories, best practice data, invoice history, and payment history to create a more robust and adaptive budgeting model.
The figures depict embodiments of the disclosed configuration for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles described herein.